


A Long, Strange Trip

by doctor_space_lesbian



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Crack, Drug Use, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 02:55:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21331105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctor_space_lesbian/pseuds/doctor_space_lesbian
Summary: Yaz has a secret. The Doctor has a revelation and a really good massage.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	A Long, Strange Trip

The Doctor and Yaz were alone in Yaz's room. The rest of the Khans had gone out to see a movie, so they had a couple of hours for Yaz to pack up the items she wanted to keep in the TARDIS. Spare clothes, mail, toiletries, electronics chargers, a few sentimental items, a wooden box that Yaz was quite adamant the Doctor not attempt to unlock, and a padded case with a handle.

  
Yaz gulped as the Doctor started to unzip the case. "No!" she said hastily. "Not here."

"Yaz, what's going on?"

"I promise I'll tell you everything when we get to the TARDIS."

\--

Back in Yaz's room on the TARDIS, the Doctor was pacing while Yaz brought her things in and set them up around the room. She'd seen glass like that before, once, but where? When? Was it even this planet? After the first millennia, some of the details were bound to blur together.

She grabbed at the case. "Careful!" Yaz yelped.

The Doctor frowned. "What?"

"I-it's - it's really delicate. If you're gonna open it, do it on the bed."

  
The older woman obliged and a jumble of glass tipped onto the bed. A bulbous glass vase with branching arms twisted round its base, and what looked like handles - or maybe spouts - fused to either side. Tubes of some sort, the Doctor observed. One of the tubes was plugged with a smaller glass contraption. She poked it with her sonic.

"Nothing special, just borosilicate and traces of precious metals," she said. "Yaz, what exactly is this?"

  
Yaz swept a pile of books off her desk to make room. She took the glass from the Doctor and set it on the desk. She took out a water bottle from her backpack and poured some into the base of the glass. There was a spot in the center of the sculpture where an tiny rainbow opal had been fused. The water had a magnifying effect, making the opal look massive and gorgeous.Yaz rummaged in the pile of boxes for a bit, till she found the locked box. _Love a locked box_, the Doctor thought, but tried not to let her curiosity show too much.

"Doctor," Yaz said, "you know how I've got PTSD?"

_What the_\- "No, you never told me that. When were you gonna tell me that?"

"Shit!"

"I'm guessing this wasn't how you wanted that conversation to go."

"NO!"

:"Ok, do-over. We'll forget this bit happened. Plus, I think I've remembered where I've seen a thing like this before."

"Seriously?"

  
"Yeah. No, wait. It's on the tip of my...no. That's annoying."

  
Yaz had unlocked the box at last. "So what I'm gonna tell ya, some of it you already know, but there's more. You know about Izzy Flint, what that did to me. What I didn't tell you was that there was an incident when I was first training to be a cop." She looked down, toying with the corners of the lid. "A bad car accident. It was just luck I was the closest to the scene. I went, and. I saw - there was a boy, he hadn't been wearing a seatbelt..."

  
The Doctor took Yaz's hands in her own, and noticed how cold they were.

  
"There were brains on the pavement. And other things. And I watched him die as his mother screamed from inside the car, 'cos they hadn't finished cutting her out of her seat yet."

Yaz looked down. The Doctor was rubbing her hands gently. "And you couldn't stop seeing it every time you closed your eyes, right?"

  
"No, I couldn't."

  
"And you got scared every time you went out on shift, thinking that the next call would be another bad one."

  
"Yeah. I'd cry myself awake a lot. Eventually the stress got to where my supervisors noticed and they put me on parking disputes thinking that'd keep me out of the worst of it. But that doesn't mean anything when I could just be passing by when it happens." Yaz had tears in her eyes. "I don't feel safe out there, but I found something that feels sort of like it."

She shook her hands free of the Doctor's and picked up the box.

"How d'you know so much about PTSD?" Yaz asked.

That question got a faraway look from the Doctor in reply, and Yaz understood.

"So, what did you find?" the Doctor said brightly, switching gears. 

"Something that I can't have back home, because it's illegal, but when we went to that garden planet I tried it..."

"And?"

"For the first time in months I slept through the night. No flashbacks. No nightmares."

Yaz rummaged through the box until she had a small collection of items in her hand - a metal spoon, a small gas torch, a glass ornament, and a small jar of yellow oil. She placed these on the desk.

The Doctor pointed her sonic at the oil.   
"Huh," she said. "Plant-based, seems harmless enough, but whoa. Yaz, that's an awful lot of phytocannabinoids in there. You sure about this?"

Yaz nodded. "It really helped. But I can't have it at home, being a cop and all. I was hoping you'd let me keep it here."

"Oh, Yaz." The Doctor looked at her sadly. "I'm sorry you felt like you had to keep any of this a secret. I had no idea you were suffering."

Yaz shrugged. "Most of the time I'm fine. It just hits me out of nowhere sometimes, and then I'm back there again, and I know the rest of the day's gonna be hard..." 

Anything else Yaz had planned to say was quickly muffled as the Doctor pulled her into a tight hug. 

They stayed like that for a long time. Yaz felt the hard little knot of anxiety come undone inside her, and a little sob came out.

"Easy, easy," the Doctor said, stroking Yaz's back. "I've got you, Yaz. Let it out." 

And for several minutes, Yaz cried and cried into the Doctor's coat. 

When they parted, Yaz's face was swollen and wet, but she managed a little smile.

"Thank you," she said. 

"Of course," the Doctor replied. "You're my fam."

They sat down on the bed. Yaz leaned into the Doctor's shoulder and sighed. 

"So tell me, Doctor," Yaz asked. "What happened to you?"

"Another time, Yaz," the Time Lord said. "It's a long, long story, and I don't want to burden you more."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Can you tell me one thing?" Yaz asked, wrapping her arm around the Doctor's waist. "Did it turn out all right in the end?"

"Mostly, yeah. It was pretty bad for a few billion years, but then I learned that the thing I'd feared the most didn't happen after all." 

"Wait. Billion? I - how old are you?" 

The Doctor laughed. "Well, that depends on whether you count the 4 and a half billion years I spent trapped inside my own bespoke prison. But if you don't count that, I'm a little over two thousand years old." 

"Whoa." Yaz had no idea how to respond to that. She knew her friend was an alien, and it was hard to forget that when they literally travelled through time and space, but it was still a jolt to be reminded that this petite blonde woman sitting next to her was actually _ancient_. 

_The things she must have seen and done..._

Yaz let go of the Doctor, stood up, and went to the desk. 

"Oh! I want to watch," the Doctor said, following her.

"Just so we're clear, you're totally fine with me doing drugs on your ship," Yaz said. 

"Graham puts away 3 pots of tea a day sometimes and I don't get after him for caffeine use," the Doctor said. "It's your business. As long as you can still keep up..." her voice trailed off. 

"I promise, Doctor. Only at night."  
  
"All right." 

"You were considering it, though, just now."

Yaz blew out a breath. "Yeah. It's been a day."

"Mind if I join you?"

If she were in a cartoon, Yaz thought, her eyes would have popped out of her head about 3 feet at this point, but thankfully they stayed firmly inside their sockets.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. Call it...intellectual curiosity." 

"Okay. But we'd better get some snacks first. This stuff can make you hungry."

The Doctor was already halfway to the door. "Kitchen! Pronto! Ooh. Never saying that again."

\--

A while later, they had a little picnic assembled, and Yaz was setting up the device, which the Doctor had learned was called a "dab rig." 

"I'll do you first, then I'll go," Yaz said. "Seeing as you've never done this before."

"Ready to go?" Yaz had the spoon ready, with a tiny drop of golden oil clinging to its tip. 

"Ohhhhyes!" the Doctor roared, then frowned. "Does that still work?" 

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Yaz said, and dropped the oil into the contraption on the side. "Inhale. Now!"

The Doctor obliged and the rig filled with white-clear fumes. She blew out a big cloud and inhaled again, clearing the glass. She blew another cloud, then sat back. "Oh yes! That's the same stuff. Tastes just like space cakes."

Yaz dropped the spoon. "How do you know about space cakes?"

The Doctor grabbed at her temples as if trying to physically shake the memory loose. "OH!"

"Oh?"

"Amsterdam! Early twenty-first century. I had a meeting with Braxiatel, for some reason he insisted we meet at a place called Paradox. He said they had 'the best space cakes.' They didn't taste like space to me. And I should know.

Anyway there were people smoking and some of them were smoking like, cigarettes, and some were smoking out of vases like this. And then they seemed really happy, which was nice. Very friendly people in Amsterdam."

Yaz had stopped fiddling with the torch to stare at the Doctor. "Space cakes."

"Yep."

"You. In Amsterdam. With - whoever that is. Getting high on space cakes."

The Doctor frowned. "Me? High? I don't think so. I just had a really interesting dream..."

The Doctor's metabolism was much faster than a human's, and the dab hit her like a truck. She stopped mid-sentence, her eyes wide. "_oh_."

"OH."

A big smile crossed her lips, and she walked over to the bed, tipping forward into the covers like a felled tree.

Yaz laughed a little. She'd never seen the Doctor so out of it. Not even on Tsuranga, when she'd been comatose for 3 days. Somehow, even then, she was active, tossing and turning and muttering the whole time. 

Yaz turned to the desk again and served herself a dab. She checked her watch - 45 seconds down. It was 7 pm. Where had the time gone? At least she was still keeping her promise to the Doctor. 

She joined the Doctor on the bed. The warm relaxation flooded her body a few minutes later. 

"Doctor?" 

"Yeah?"

"What'cha thinking?"

"How I really wasn't very nice to Adric," the Doctor said, her voice muffled by the duvet. 

"Who's that?"

"He stowed away on my ship to escape an alternate universe. Really good at numbers. Horrific social skills. But I didn't try very hard to get along with him either. And I had two other companions and he fought with them too but I think - I _hope_ \- that deep down, he knew we cared for him."

"Mmf."

There was a sound in the Doctor's head, like a thunderclap, and then a booming voice filled her mind.

"So I see I've gone soft in my old age," her predecessor snarked. She could see him clearly now, sitting on the leather sofa in a strange cafe next to - Brax? What the hell?

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"I could ask you the same thing."

"I see now," the Doctor said, "But I don't know why you're seeing me. Or why I'm seeing you. See what I mean?"

"No."

"We shouldn't be here. We shouldn't be talking like this. This is a paradox waiting to happen."

"And yet, here we are." Her predecessor laughed, his booming voice strangely reassuring to her. Was this how she had sounded to Sarah Jane? Nyssa? Adric?

"Can you see me?" she asked, her mouth dry.

"Just as clearly as you can see me," the other Doctor responded. 

_Oh dear._

She opened her eyes, breaking the connection. Yaz was beside her on the bed, looking worried.

"Doctor?"

Was all that out loud?

"Yes. I heard everything, though it didn't make much sense. What happened, Doctor?"

"Well, I am now sure that this stuff and the space cakes were the same stuff." She didn't seem stoned at all now to Yaz, but who knew how cannabis affected Time Lords anyway?

"Doctor," Yaz asked. "What did you see?"

"I saw myself."

"I'm confused." Yaz fiddled with the edges of her blanket. This stuff makes me kind of introspective anyway, I think it's meant to be like that."

"Introspection's a little different for my people," the Doctor sighed. "We have multiple lives, multiple bodies, personalities, memories-" 

"Like the white-haired Scotsman."

"Oh, he wasn't the only one. Not by a lot."

"So who was - were - you?" 

"Well, before that, I mean way before, like centuries ago, I was a curly-haired fellow in a scarf. And somehow when I was that me, and I was in Amsterdam, I saw this me. That shouldn't be possible."

"So you got stoned and saw your future self?" Yaz asked.

"It would seem so." 

Yaz found this hilarious. "Only you could pull off a stunt like that, Doctor." She laughed. The Doctor looked worried. 

"It's considered an extreme faux pas to cross your own time line, Yaz," the Doctor said. "Not that that keeps it from happening every so often."

"So what's the worst that could happen?" Yaz said, a bit sleepily. 

"Could be nothing, could be a new hole in the space-time continuum. Or ripples, back from now through my timeline to the me in Amsterdam, wreaking untold havoc and destruction."

Yaz was starting to feel the soporific effects of the strain. "So our options are nothing, kaboom, or smashed butterflies."

"Yep."

"Well, if we were gonna explode we'd have done it already, I think. And if history's changed then it already happened so we won't know the difference. So I think it's probably ok."

The Doctor beamed. "Yaz, you're a genius. Of course." She flopped back onto the bed, now mostly sober, but a bit stiff from holding the contact with herself for so long. She rubbed at her shoulder with one hand, but Yaz stopped her. 

"Let me." 

The Doctor was surprised, but let her hand fall to her lap as Yaz began to gently knead her tight shoulders.

"Oh, _ohhh_."

"What?"

"I don't think I've ever been this relaxed, Yaz. I didn't think I was capable."

"That's good. Here, get your braces down."

The Doctor slipped her braces off her shoulders. She felt like she'd just been born, like the day she had stood on legs that were new, held onto the deteriorating console with new hands, shouting for help that never came with a new voice.  
Yaz began to work over the knots in her back as the Doctor's thoughts drifted.

She'd found herself a little bit less touch-friendly in this body, and suspected the gender change was behind it. There was a sense of constant wariness that she picked up from the human women she met,  
and some of the cultures of this time period were utterly barbaric for women. She also no longer had the advantage of size. It was ridiculous how much a few inches meant to one's social standing on this planet. 

Still, she didn't regret it a bit, and a part of her loved the challenge. She'd sort out the bad guys, even if she didn't have attack eyebrows to work with anymore. This new body had some interesting features that she was enjoying learning about. Like her sense of taste and smell were suddenly amazingly good. They'd always been above average, but now she had a chef's palate and a bloodhound's sense of smell. She was happy here, now, with Yaz rubbing her back and humming to herself. She began to dream while still partly awake, and soon her thoughts turned to the picnic they'd assembled. 

Yaz had stopped massaging. In fact, she'd stopped doing anything, and was snoring lightly on her side. 

"I'll owe you one," the Doctor whispered, and gently extricated herself from Yaz's arms. She put a pillow under Yaz's head and stood up.

Minutes later, she'd assembled a fried egg sandwich and was squeezing ketchup onto it. She hopped back onto the bed and prodded Yaz gently.

Yaz sat up sleepily and opened her eyes. "Sorry, I dozed off." 

"S'ok. You hungry?"

"God, yes." 

The Doctor rummaged around in the basket again and produced a plate of cold samosas.

"Mint or tamarind?"

"Ooh, mint please." Yaz took a big bite of one of the samosas. "You know what we need?" she asked through a mouthful of filling and crust.

"What?" 

"Milkshakes. Really fancy ones, with sprinkles and a cherry and...whatever else they put on milkshakes." 

The Doctor looked intrigued, then looked into the basket. "No joy here. But there's a place I know that does them and oh, you'd love it." She was already tugging her braces and coat back on, juggling the fried egg sandwich from one hand to the other as she did. "Come on! Up you get!" 

"Doctor, are you sure you're all right to drive?" Yaz said as she was suddenly tugged to her feet.

"Of course! Superior Time Lord metabolism." 

"I dunno about that," Yaz said. "This stuff's supposed to last a couple hours. More like minutes for you."

The Doctor looked into Yaz's eyes, noticing the dilated pupils and slight bloodshot look. "Ah, you're still feeling it, I see. Are you ok to travel?"

"As long as it's for nothing more serious than a milkshake, yeah."

"I'll take that as a yes," the Doctor said.

"Doctor, wait," Yaz said, reaching for something on the desk. She held it out. "Do you think this could've been why you saw yourself?"

She handed the jar to the Doctor, who turned it over in her hands until she found the label. It was written in an alien script, one she hadn't seen in a long time. It took her a moment, but when she worked it out, she gasped a little.

"Hang on, why's my name on this jar?" she asked. "Is this a joke?"

"No, Doctor, it's called a strain. That's the name of the strain. The plant they made it from."

"They named a strain after _me_?"

"I don't know anyone else who goes round calling themselves the Doctor-"

"I do, but they're all me."

"That's cheating."

"That's biology." The Doctor set the jar back down. "Oh, I am going to have to have a word with Brax next time I see him..."

She noticed Yaz's face looked concerned. "Never mind that for now. Milkshakes!"

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously if you're underage/living in an area where cannabis is prohibited/not a Time Lord, do NOT attempt to replicate the events of this story! 
> 
> And yes, "The Doctor" is a real strain.


End file.
